“The No Rights Zone”:  Violence Against Muslims in China

Join the World Affairs Council Upstate for the first in our 2021-2022 series,

Beyond the Headlines: Critical issues Impacting Our World

The Chinese government has forced more than a million Muslims into internment camps, where they face psychological and physical torture. The vast majority are ethnic Uighurs, a Turkic minority group living in Xinjiang, though the “Sinification of Islam Campaign” now impacts several minority groups and regions. While many outside of China accuse the Communist Party of genocide, Chinese officials adamantly insist the internment camps are “vocational training schools” and a necessary tool for “combatting extremist thought and international terrorism”. What, if anything, can be done to improve conditions in Xinjiang? How will developments in Afghanistan, and increasing US-China tensions impact the plight of China’s Muslim population?

Katherine “Kate” Palmer Kaup is the James B. Duke Professor of Asian Studies and Political Science at Furman University in Greenville, SC.  She holds an A.B. from Princeton University ’89  and an M.A./Ph.D ’97 in Government and Foreign Affairs from the University of Virginia. Kaup’s research focuses on ethnic minorities, rule of law, and human rights developments in China. In her most recent article “Controlling Law: Legal Developments in China’s Southwest Minority Regions,” in The China Quarterly she examines how conflicts between customary minority law and state law are resolved. She is the author of Creating the Zhuang: Ethnic Politics in China, several articles and chapters on ethnic minorities, and editor and contributor to the textbook Understanding Contemporary Asia (2nd edition 2021).  She serves on the Board of Directors for the National Committee on United States-China Relations (NCUSCR) and is a NCUSCR Public Intellectual Fellow. Kaup has served as special adviser for Minority Nationalities Affairs at the Congressional-Executive Commission on China, Chair of Furman’s Asian Studies Department and of the Furman Faculty, Director of the Riley Institute’s China Programs, Distinguished Visiting Professor at Yunnan Nationalities University, Visiting Scholar at the Guangxi Ethnic Affairs Commission, and PI/Program Director for several federally-funded Chinese language programs and for the Luce Initiative on Asian Studies and the Environment. She regularly leads groups to China, including student/faculty/alumni/government groups.

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